Monday, 19 October 2015

Round Britain Quiz

A power-hungry citizen; the rent paid in kind by a
12th-century Scottish farmer; and Hollywood Brit ... all sound the same but are
spelt differently. Who (or what) are they and why should the lattermost's
catch-phrase be appropriate to Round
Britain Quiz?

Regular listeners to radio's longest-running quiz will
recognise the question style: three cryptic crossword-style clues providing the
link to an overall question. And, in typical RBQ style even if you know the answer the trick is, according to
one-time exponent of the quiz Irene Thomas, that "it's really a matter of
thinking aloud. If you know the answer and say it straight out, it's no fun.
You have to amble towards it, and the fun always come when you get lost on the
way".

A new series of Round
Britain Quiz kicks off today on BBC Radio 4. Starting in 1947 its
five-years older than Brain of Britain, but its roots go back
to a wartime cultural exchange between the US and the UK. Here's my brief
history of RBQ, which, quite neatly,
fits into three parts.

Part 1 The Hale Years

In April 1944 the
BBC's North American Service and the American Blue Network (formerly part of NBC) launched a joint programme
called Transatlantic Quiz. The quiz
consisted of a chairman and two team members who "traded questions between
London and New York with the idea of testing one team's knowledge of the
other's country. Some of the questions were cryptic, but many were plain
general knowledge." The chairman in New York was Alistair Cooke whilst
back in London it was Lionel Hale (both pictured below). Cooke had already appeared in a similar
venture the previous year, a transatlantic discussion programme called Answering You.

Transatlantic Quiz
featured some well-known participants such as David Niven, Peter Ustinov and
Joyce Grenfell. But the unlikely star was Professor Denis Brogan, a man who
"could identify the most obscure political quotations, or plumb the
shadiest depths of American literature." In July 1945 home listeners got a
chance to hear the quiz when the Light Programme started to broadcast it. It
ran for as further six years, ending its run in 1951.

Meanwhile in 1947 the Light Programme was looking for a
similar UK-based quiz and in November Round
Britain Quiz was launched, This set the basic programme format for the next
fifty years. Each week the two-person London team took on a two-person team
from one of the regions - Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland, the West, the North and the Midlands. There were two chairmen,
with the London team it was always Lionel Hale (he remained with the programme
for twenty years) and with the regional teams Gilbert Harding. Like its
predecessor the mainstay of the London team was Denis Brogan, like Hale he put
in a twenty year stint. Others on the London team included Hubert Phillips and
Cedric Cliffe. Long-time participants for the regions included Jack House and
Sir James Fergusson in Scotland and Welsh novelist Wyn Griffith. Following
Gilbert Harding's death in 1960 there were a number of short-term replacements
before Roy Plomley became the regular second question-master.

Inexplicably following the 1968 series Round Britain Quiz was dropped from Radio 4's schedule. It would be
a five years hiatus.

Part 2 Revival and
Expansion into Europe

RBQ's revival was
due, in part, to the persistence of a former contestant Irene Thomas (pictured left), the Queen
of Quizzes long before Daphne Fowler came onto the scene. Irene, a former Brain of Britain winner , had joined the
programme before the end of its 1960s run as one of the London team. Apparently
she wrote some "nice but persistent" letters to Radio 4 controller
Tony Whitby to bring the programme back. He agreed and assigned the production
to BBC Manchester under the guidance of Trevor Hill. The programme returned on
1 April 1973.

Hill recalled that he slightly tweaked the format which saw
the introduction of more cryptic "verbal crossword" questions that
have become the programme's trademark. "I discovered ... that it was no
use for one person to set the questions, however inventive and amusing they
might be, and then for another person to pose them. When contestants are
seeking clues and guidance the quizmaster has to know all he can about the
background in order to 'feed' the teams and often to get their minds working on
another tack so that they see the common link between one part of the answer
and the other parts".

Setting and asking the questions at the London end was
Professor Anthony Quinton and with the regions it was Jack Longland, at the
time well-known to listeners for Any
Questions and My Word! The regular London team consisted of Irene
Thomas and Professor John B Mays - can their ever have been so many professors on the same show since the
days of The Brains Trust? Later
Irene's team mate was Eric Korn.

Jack Longland left the programme in 1976, to be replaced by
Gordon Clough. Familiar to Radio 4 listeners for PM and The World at One,
Gordon contended that RBQ was
"one of the hardest jobs I have to do in radio. I have to aim at creating
questions which contain at least one part that the audience at home can answer
without too much trouble".

Here are a couple of recordings from the mid-80s. From 19
August 1984 this first programme features Irene Thomas and Eric Korn on the
London team and Patrick Nuttgens and Paddy Fitzpatrick representing the North.
Asking the questions are Gordon Clough and Louis Allen, who replaced Anthony
Quinton between 1983 and 1991.

I recorded this edition on 26 September 1985 when the
competing team for the Midlands was John Julius Norwich and Peter Oppenheimer.
The London team had a fearsome reputation for winning, but here the Midlands
team, and in particular Peter Oppenheimer, show their mettle.

Such was the success of the revived Round Britain Quiz that it spawned two spin-offs. First there was Round Europe Quiz (3 series 1977-81)
with Irene Thomas and John Julius Norwich representing England taking on teams
from France, Italy Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark Austria and Poland.
Gordon Clough and Anthony Quinton continued in their inquisitorial roles.
Producer Trevor Hill recalls that the idea came from network controller Ian
McIntryre who asked him to widen his quiz horizons. "needless to say each
European I saw had to have, in the first instance, a very good knowledge of the
English language plus the ability, when I tested them, to take part in and
enjoy that essentially English pastime of doing crossword puzzles."

The second spin-off was our old friend Transatlantic Quiz (7 series 1976-86). Again it was populated with
the usual suspects: a London team of Irene Thomas and John Julius Norwich,
questions posed by Louis Allen and Anthony Quinton (later Gordon Clough). In
the States the team was Brendon Gill and, for the most part, Shana
Alexander.

When the 1995 series of Round
Britain Quiz came to an end it dropped off the schedules. The death the
following year of Gordon Clough seemed to finally have put paid to the
programme's return.

Part 3 Slimmed Down
but Not Dumbed Down

But you can't keep a good quiz format down and in 1997 RBQ returned reinvigorated and with
further tweaks to the format. Gone was the resident London team, they now had
to compete on an equal footing like everyone else. Gone indeed was Irene Thomas
("I loved every minute of it" she told Sue Lawley, "I could have
gone on doing it all the time"). This slimmed down version now had just
one question master, Nick Clarke who was not expected to devise the questions
himself. There was some debate as to whether the questions had been dumbed down
with Roland White noting in the Radio
Times that "the pool of knowledge has been widened". Listening
again to the 1980s editions I'm inclined to agree with him.

Nick Clarke's tenure lasted until 2005 (he died the
following year) when again the programme's future hung in the balance. It did
return, of course, from June 2007 with Tom Sutcliffe now posing the questions.

Tom is back at 3 pm today when Round Britain Quiz returns with Scotland and Wales competing.

And the answer to the question posed at the start of this
post, culled from a Radio Times
article written by Nick Baker in 1985,
refers to a power-hungry citizen, think of Citizen Kane played by Orson Welles
in 1941 film. The rent paid by Scottish farmers was called, assuming you know
your Gaelic, as Cain. That Hollywood Brit is one Michael Caine (who back in 1985 had yet to return to live in the UK). All of which
should lead you to his supposed catchphrase "Not a lot of people know
that", though he has denied ever saying it.

The UK Game Shows website lists some of the Round Britain Quiz question masters but
then they didn't have the benefit of the estimable BBC Genome, The full list is
as follows:

Lionel Hale
1947/1949-68

Gilbert
Harding 1947-60

Leonard
Sachs 1948

Robert
McDermott 1948

Philip
Hope-Wallace 1948

Peter Watson
1949

Howard
Marion-Crawford 1957

Lionel
Gamlin 1957

Stephen
Potter 1960-61

Kevin
Fitzgerald 1961

Edward Ward
1961

Michael
Flanders 1961

Roy Plomley
1961-68

Patrick
Harvey 1962-66

Anthony
Quinton 1973-82/92-95

Jack
Longland 1973-76

Gordon
Clough 1977-95

Louis Allen
1983-91

Nick Clarke
1997-05

Tom
Sutcliffe 2007-

References:

Transatlantic Quiz by Lionel Hale in The World Radio and Television Annual
(Sampson Low, Marston & Co 1947)

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About Me

Hailing originally from Hull and spending most of my life in East Yorkshire I'm now resident in France.
For over 30 years I've been interested in radio, tv and film and have an archive of off-air recordings and radio-related material.
I'm not the Andy Walmsley that designs sets or produces tv programmes.
Professionally I worked in Local Government.
My wife Val works for Beaux Villages Immobilier.